I would like to hear what everyone does to improve their native trees. I'm talking about your good acorn droppers, your persimmons, mulberries, and your orchards. Not everyone can put in food plots. That doesn't mean they can't have a good spot to kill a deer.

Follow the diameterX2 rule about clearing out around your most promising trees. Take the tree measurement at breast height in inches, change that number to feet and take it times two. This should be your spacing between trees. For example - if you have a nice white oak measured 10 inches at breast height, then change the 10 inches to 10 feet and take that times two. Spacing between trees should be 20 feet. Getting your most promising trees ample sunlight will be a great help.

We put in crabapples last year and apples, peach, and cherries this year. Home Depot had some real good sized apple trees for five dollars I picked up a couple of months ago.

When we bought our place in 2002 the MDC land specialist told us not to bother with planting fruit trees as they were a pain in the backside to manage as they matured. I don't think he realized how much we wanted to "manage" our place. Anyway I wished we would have not listened to him and planted those trees back then, by now we might have some with fruit on them.

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” Aldo Leopold

I cut my aspen in the winter. come spring a deer hotel-buffet grows up. my father is a retired forrester and told me that a 10 inch aspen cut in winter will have about 50-75 shoots coming up in the spring in a circle the diameter of the drip line so each winter I do about a half to a whole acer clearcut staggered from last years. I burn the wood in the fireplace or woodstove during the day. deer flock to the clearcuts!!! I also release my oaks from non mast trees in the winter, maples-cherry-ash send up shoots in the spring. I also hingecut non mast trees to create cover and the trees live laying on the ground as long as there is bark left attached to the tree and shoots come up along the trunk toward the sky. the edges of my clearcuts also thicken up due to increased sunlight a bonus!

my greatest fear in life is when I die my wife will sell my hunting equipment for what she thinks I spent